botocore.exceptions.ClientError 403 HeadObject operation: Forbidden when using collectstatic, Django on App platform with Spaces

Hey everyone,

I have been struggling with this error for the past 3 days and could not find any further information on the web on how to fix it. Any help would be amazing!

I am running a Django project on the DigitalOcean app platform nicely, but setting up static file serving with the spaces S3 bucket raises the same error locally and in production:

botocore.exceptions.ClientError: An error occurred (403) when calling the HeadObject operation: Forbidden

My settings.py contains the following configurations:

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=os.environ.get('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID')
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_ID=os.environ.get('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_ID')
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=os.environ.get('AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME')
AWS_S3_REGION_NAME=os.environ.get('AWS_S3_REGION_NAME')
AWS_S3_ENDPOINT_URL=os.environ.get('AWS_S3_ENDPOINT_URL')
AWS_S3_OBJECT_PARAMETERS={'CacheControl': 'max-age=86400'}
AWS_S3_SIGNATURE_VERSION='s3v4'
AWS_LOCATION='static'
AWS_DEFAULT_ACL='public-read'

I have checked the correctness of the API keys multiple times, but once I call collectstatic, the aforementioned error results. A full log from the DigitalOcean build logs after my packages have been installed:

[2023-11-01 09:45:32] │ -----> $ python manage.py collectstatic --noinput
[2023-11-01 09:45:32] │        /workspace/manage.py:9: UserWarning: Not reading /workspace/.env - it doesn't exist.
[2023-11-01 09:45:32] │          dotenv.read_dotenv()
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │        Traceback (most recent call last):
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/workspace/manage.py", line 23, in <module>
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            main()
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/workspace/manage.py", line 19, in main
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 442, in execute_from_command_line
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            utility.execute()
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/core/management/__init__.py", line 436, in execute
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            self.fetch_command(subcommand).run_from_argv(self.argv)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 412, in run_from_argv
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            self.execute(*args, **cmd_options)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/core/management/base.py", line 458, in execute
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            output = self.handle(*args, **options)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/management/commands/collectstatic.py", line 209, in handle
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            collected = self.collect()
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/management/commands/collectstatic.py", line 135, in collect
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            handler(path, prefixed_path, storage)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/management/commands/collectstatic.py", line 368, in copy_file
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            if not self.delete_file(path, prefixed_path, source_storage):
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/django/contrib/staticfiles/management/commands/collectstatic.py", line 278, in delete_file
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            if self.storage.exists(prefixed_path):
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/storages/backends/s3.py", line 514, in exists
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            self.connection.meta.client.head_object(Bucket=self.bucket_name, Key=name)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/botocore/client.py", line 535, in _api_call
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            return self._make_api_call(operation_name, kwargs)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │                   ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │          File "/app/.heroku/python/lib/python3.11/site-packages/botocore/client.py", line 980, in _make_api_call
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │            raise error_class(parsed_response, operation_name)
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │        botocore.exceptions.ClientError: An error occurred (403) when calling the HeadObject operation: Forbidden
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │  !     Error while running '$ python manage.py collectstatic --noinput'.
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │        See traceback above for details.
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │        You may need to update application code to resolve this error.
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │        Or, you can disable collectstatic for this application:
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │           $ heroku config:set DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │        https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/django-assets
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ ERROR: failed to build: exit status 1
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ For documentation on the buildpacks used to build your app, please see:
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │    Python  v2.234.4  https://do.co/apps-buildpack-python
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │ 
[2023-11-01 09:45:33] │  ✘ build failed